Subject: Re: AbiWord Interface Review
From: Alan (horkana@tcd.ie)
Date: Fri Aug 10 2001 - 08:36:31 CDT
Jared Davis wrote:
> 2. Use the Gnome icons so that AbiWord looks consistent on all platforms it
> runs on.
Please, Please, Please dont change the icons. Abiword has a style of
its own which i think is nicer than the standard icons. What if
Microsoft changes the standard? Abiword wont match, does Abiword match
the look and feel of Windows XP? Consistancy is important but i think
it is more important for abiword to be consistant with itself, id like
it to look similar when im in widnows and when im in Linux.
I just want to say im emphatically against this, athough im not going to
be around to make a fuss about it for a while.
> Response to Alan:
>
> > Im really nit picking here but the graphics included in your document
> > dont look good.
>
> The graphics were created primarily with Microsoft Image Composer 1.5. They
> are available in their original .png form from
> http://aiken.clan11.com/abiword/ui/. If this is a problem with AbiWord's
> displaying, a bug report should be filed. To me they look pretty nice,
> maybe it's just my computer.
I looked at the graphics in a few different things and they still suck.
if you cant see it then Zoom in a litte and you will see that instead of
having a smooth even color you get a speckled blotchy grey (which will
never compress as well as one smooth even color). I suspect the
graphics program you used does not have a very good dithering
algorithm. Doing as i suggested produces very clear and small
screenshots (so long as you dont have a gradient in the toolbar). Its
way more efficient and it appeals to my sense of aesthetics to use only
minima colors but its definatey not only way to do it. It would be a
good way to keep the size of the graphics in the documentation small, if
anyone was pedantic enough to do it (i almost that pedantic but im going
to have to take a break from Abiword as it is interfering with my
study). After doing loads of screenshots i decided that this was the
way i thought was most efficient.
[for those who missed the orignal comment: turn off the gradient on the
windows toolbars, paste your screenshot into mspaint, and save as a 16
color bitmap. Then use another graphics program such as the Gimp to
convert to very small clean low color bitmaps]
> > Stuff from your Appendix i strongly disagree with and think are terrible
> > ideas
> > 8 Add description of action in undo option in edit menu, i.e. 'undo
> > bold' (1.1.3)
>
> I'd like to know why you think this is a terrible idea. It seems to me that
> knowing what the program is going to undo is valuable.
Sorry my bad. i rushed through the document, and i was generalising.
its not a particularly bad idea :), i think maybe an undo History popup
dialog would be more appropriate which i think is what Adobe photoshoop
does (not sure tho'). That way allows for a more verbose desciption of
each action. If you followed this line of reasoning and made it way
more complicated you could lead on to some sort of Revision history and
collaboration features, which Lotus Smartsuite has (and probably MS word
too).
> > It will take you hours to submit all these RFE's, i dont envy you, have
> > fun :P
>
> =) I have no intention of doing *that*.
>
> I'll try to go about integrating the replies into the document itself
> eventually. This way we'll be able to see which suggestions are popular and
> which are not.
>
> Thanks,
> Jared
-- Are you thinking what I’m thinking, Pinky? Uh, yeah Brain, but where are we going to find rubber pants our size?
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